Looking for suggestions on good Record stores in the LA - San Luis Obispo area

Forumers,

l am in Paso Robles for work and heading back to LA at the end of the week. l was wondering if there was some good new or used stores worth a visit, mainly looking for Vinyl and SACD's. So far l have been to Amoeba in LA, BooBoo Records and Cheap Thrills in SLO. Pretty lean pickings so far, especially for SACD.

Thanks for any tips
Mondie

 

Boo Boos. I practically lived there when i was at Cal Poly

 

'ello! Well you've discovered a down side to living up around here. It is a beautiful place to live and I am very grateful but for vinyl, it seems 90% of vinyl in the area vanished not long after the CD came out, straight to the dumpsters it would seem. SACDs are about as common as good developers in Atascadero. You have already seen the two best stores in SLO County, times used to be better for both of course. Strange, but true.

Hope you have a fine time, a safe trip and come on back some time. Bring your own vinyl & SACDs.

 

Good luck in your quest - I went to about a dozen LA record stores this past weekend when I was in Bakersfield for a business trip. I thought the pickings were quite slim - see my post in the Long and Winding threads as to what I ended up buying on vinyl. You might check to see if there is any sort of record show on the weekend - I was lucky enough to be in town for the Pasadena flea market which has quite a number of vinyl vendors, so I picked up a about 10 LP's there.

These are some of the places I went:

Counterpoint Books and Records - slim pickens, but better than most of the others. Did seem on the expensive side.

Amoeba - Nothing there that interested me on the vinyl front at all.

Freakbeat - not much better...

Record Surplus - nothing there - came away empty handed.

CD Trader - this place seemed to have the most interesting records. I bought several things and saw a copy of "Fall in a Hole" by the Fall there ($60 - sleeve was a bit worn, but LP's were supposed to be mint).

Atomic - seemed like a pretty good shop, I only ended up buying a couple of old CD's - Pastmasters Beach Boys Concert and Rough Trade Smiths Meat is Murder ($8 each).

Rockaway - slim pickens there. Not a lot of vinyl stock on hand.

Bagatelle Records - bought a couple of LP's and CD's there. Not for the faint of heart, as the store is completely full of boxes of records which are out in front of the racks. You could probably spend all day just looking in those (I didn't have the time).


Good luck with the hunt!

 

Thanks for the replys guys So its just not being fussy then by the sounds of it. Even Target and Walmart have massively scaled back their CD range since l was last over 18 months ago. Jonathan l will try a couple of your suggestions on the trip back into LA on Friday, l would really like to find some stores with a decent stash of SACD's.

Scott, Boo Boo looked after me yesterday, picked up 2 Dead can Dance SACD's which l was pretty happy with. Not much vinyl of interest though

Cheers,
mondie